A memorial service is scheduled for Thursday, September 5 at 3 p.m. at Bradford-O'Keefe Funeral Home in Ocean Springs.

Wayne was born on June 20, 1941 in New Orleans, Louisiana, to the late Alfred E. Weidie and Dorothy McDonald Weidie. He and his family relocated to Pascagoula, Mississippi, where Wayne graduated from Pascagoula High School in 1959.

Wayne attended Mississippi State University, where he graduated with a B.A. in Political Science in 1962. He returned to the family business, Weidie Oil in Pascagoula, for a few years upon completion of his undergraduate degree, but he followed his passions for politics and journalism into the newspaper business.

Wayne later attended graduate school at Louisiana State University and was in 1975 a graduate fellow of the Mississippi Institute of Politics at Millsaps College.

For twenty years, 1970-1990, he was publisher and editor of The Ocean Springs Record and The Gautier Independent. He also was a syndicated columnist from 1972 to 1990, and also served as a political analyst for a television station in Biloxi, Mississippi, for several years. During this time, he covered numerous political campaigns and had a front row seat to Mississippi history.

He was a past president of the Mississippi Press Association and the MPA Education Foundation Board of Directors.